blown kiss, you thought. What could be more insubstantial? "Thanks a million, Ed. See you later, b " may e. I tell Dale Auden I don't like his tone. Don't like his implications. ' d I don't like you, full stop," he says. We are in the car park. I throw my grip into the back of the Volvo and turn to face him. He jabs his finger at me. "You asked her up to your room." "To continue the interview." " Bl d " 00 y pervert. I try to punch him in the face but he raises his arm and I strike his shoulder instead, hard. With astonishing speed he immobilizes me with some kind of double armlock and hisses threats and obscenities into my ear. Then he pushes me brusquely away and I career into a shrub-twigs snap. "I'm going to call your editor," he says. " p " ervert. "Get a life!" I shout at him. He laughs at that and wanders off I flex my fingers: my hand hurts. Get a life. y ou found the continued clattering and tramping up and down the stairs an irritation and eventually looked out of your room. Yvonne and a guy in a leather coat were coming down from her bedsit, Yvonne carrying a suitcase, the guy lugging a cardboard box. "Hi," you said, surprised. "Want a h d ';)" an . "N 0, thanks, we're fine, thanks. This is T on " Tony nodded and grinned hello at you above his cardboard box. "Moving out?" you said, suddenly realizing. "'T ah G . P " 1 e . oing to enzance. "Cornwall? My God. Never been to Cornwall. " "Come and see us,"Yvonne said. Five minutes later, she came back up the stairs and knocked on your door. " I C 11 " h . d " I lorgot to te you, s e SaI. rene went to Majorca. Yesterday. Took the kids with her this time." "God." ' j h " ust goes to s o You tried to understand this news, wondering if in some way you were responsible. " H ' r-r ...." ows ?mmyr "He's a bIt cut up. Not surprising, all " re "Yeah." You stood there in your room with Yvonne and you both thought about that night you had shared, silent for a few seconds. Then you looked at each other. You flexed your fingers. "I'll send you a change of address card," she said, softl "Don't forget," you said, but you knew she would. Then she stepped forward, took your head in her hands and kissed you hard, with a small clash of teeth, and her tongue was in your mouth, squirming, flickering. But before you could grab her she was gone, backing out of the room, with a wicked, ha1f-suppressed smile on her face, and Tony was honking the horn of the cerise Fiesta in the street below. You heard her heels rapping the stairs. You went and sat at your desk, trying to stay calm, thinking about Yvonne and the way she had kissed you. You knew it would be something you would never forget, that it would become one of those events that shaped and defined you as a person, a key link in the chain mail of memories woven through your life. As you looked out the window; you noticed that a slanting ray of the morn- ing sun had squeezed between two houses and touched the higher branches of the lime tree at the bottom of the garden, turning its dusty; tired summer leaves into shimmering coins of lemon- green, making the tree seem young again, and making you think of spring. W hen I arrive at the house, I find it empt)1. Felicia will have taken Gareth out in his stroller. The day is mild and breezy; the clouds swift in the blue sk)r. It's only three o'clock in the afternoon, but I pour myself two inches of vodka and fill the glass with ice cubes and brace myself for the row that will surely come. I sip my drink, feeling my lips numb slowly, and look out of the windo The clouds move, and a sudden angle of af- ternoon sun slanting over the top of the next-door house touches the uppermost branches of the old lime tree at the end of the garden. 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